News

For more than 35 years AWF has initiated or contributed to scores of model conservation programs--large and small--that have yielded new knowledge about wildlife and effective ways to assure its survival. Some current projects:

Southern Africa is richly endowed with wildlife. AWF increasingly is collaborating with parks and conservationists in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and other countries in the region to help protect their priceless resources.

Much of this Heartland embraces mountainous rain forests and beautiful crater lakes in the adjoining countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. The region has been caught up in recent years in human battles that have not only taken a severe toll on people but have continuously threatened the mountain gorillas and other rare species living there.

Because migrating wildlife in this region often cross national boundaries, the Amboseli-Longido Heartland straddles the border of two countries. It encompasses Amboseli National Park and ranch lands in Kenya and, to the south, the lower slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro and the semi-arid savannas of Longido in Tanzania. Much of the region is home to Masai pastoralists who tend their cattle on dusty plains shared with zebra, buffalo, giraffe and the world's most stable and storied elephant population.

In this Heartland, on the vast expanses of the Laikipia plateau in north central Kenya, a great diversity of wildlife thrive in the semidesert conditions. The pastoral Samburu people herd their goats, sheep, cattle and camels in the shadow of Mt. Kenya, a crucial source of water for humans and animals alike.